In this article, we use a new data set describing governments, political parties and institutions to make an explicit comparison between Western Europe (WE) and Central Eastern Europe (CEE) in the investigation of three different topical issues found in the coalition literature, namely, coalition formation (that is, which factors affect who forms the winning coalitions), the number of cabinet members (that is, what affects the number of ministers in a cabinet) and cabinet duration (that is, which factors affect how long a new government lasts). Our findings indicate that, regardless of all the discussions about how CEE is different from WE because of the post-communist heritage or the volatility of voters in the CEE region, structural attributes such as the size and number of political parties are important determinants of coalition formation and cabinet duration patterns in both the West and the East. In fact, precisely because of the unsettled nature of CEE party politics, structural attributes tend to matter even more in the East.

Political parties are essential for parliamentary democracy, the form of government that prevails in most European states. But how have parties adapted to modern society – not least a new layer of political decision-making in the EU? Should we talk of a crisis of party democracy?

This book reports the findings of a comparative survey of parties in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland and Sweden, all EU member states; and Norway, which remains outside the Union. Using original data, it explores how power is exercised within party organisations and their respective parliamentary groups.

Within an analytical framework that envisages a party as a series of delegation relationships, the book illuminates how leaders are chosen, how election candidates are selected, how manifestos are written – and how a party's various elements are co-ordinated. For all the challenges posed by multi-level governance, parties retain much of their capacity for making democracy work.